Cool or uncool?
Is this advert cool or uncool?
Reasons why it’s cool:
– It’s an internationally oriented product for that well-known Philips coffee machine.
– It’s got an English sounding name (the brand is “Zinglez”).
– It doesn’t look particularly Dutch.
Reasons why it’s not cool:
– It says Coffeepower and not coffee power (minor detail).
– It’s currently only available in the Netherlands.
– “Zinglez” reads like a last name in Spanish.
April 21st, 2005 at 9:05 am
The first letter of the name of the product is supposedly the letter Z. However… They write it like it’s the letter S.
About the word “coffeepower”… I think that’s a (failed?) attempt at a “funny” play with words.
I’m not sure whether this is actually “Dunglish” though. There’s not really a combination of English and Dutch in one or more words?
There are some English words, and there are some Dutch words…
It IS kind of annoying though. We’re in the Netherlands. Place an ad in Dutch language already!
April 21st, 2005 at 9:18 am
That first Z bugs me as well. I wouldn’t call this Dunglish either, but I felt a need to post this. A play on words has to appeal to its intended audience, but who is that in this case? Singlez makes more sense and is more consistent, albeit less original. The first Z is to be pronounced à la Dutch, and therefore ruins it for anyone who can actually pronounce English. I call this “bastard” English.
April 22nd, 2005 at 2:33 pm
I would still read that as ‘Singlez’, thinking that the S was designed to mirror the Z at the end. Even if I knew that it was Zinglez, I’m not sure I would lapse into that sloppy ‘s for z’ thing when referring to it in Dutch (‘de son in de see sien sakken’ is a joke in my idiolect, not a feature).
‘Coffeepower’ is just plain wrong, of course. I think all the spaces that get taken out of English phrases in Dunglish end up in Dutch words that should be compounds …
I see this as a product that tries to harness the ‘cool factor’ of English even though it’s aimed at the NL market (http://foodorama.20six.nl/archive/2005/04/03/1fcm407pblqmh.htm). Then again, just because it’s available only from AH doesn’t mean it might not eventually end up in Ahold stores in other countries, which is another matter entirely.
Cinglez vers la bonne vieille cafétière ! À bas les dosettes !
April 23rd, 2005 at 12:44 am
Perhaps they reversed the initial letter to prevent their new logo from conflicting with another, better-known mark:
Zorro: So you recognize that famous symbol, don’t you?
Old man: Si señor, it is the number two.
“Coffeepower” may sound wrong, but judging from the lineup of “Zinglez” products (“intensive shock”, “powerful passion”, “supreme smoky”), I have to imagine that their target market of taste-deprived twentysomethings is not going to quibble over a few phony words.
I think this is not quite as annoying as those Russified English-language advertisements in which all the capital ‘R’s have been reversed.
April 24th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Not specifically related to this story, but it is, kind of, about Dunglish…
http://standaard.typepad.com/taalblog/2005/04/englishing_is_i.html
April 25th, 2005 at 11:13 am
Excellent, my kind of link!